39 killed, 41 injured in Iraq violence

Baghdad: A total of 39 people were killed and 41 injured in separate violent incidents, including during a security operation, across Iraq Thursday, police said.

In northern Iraq, police carried out an offensive targeting insurgent groups in Mosul, some 400 km from Baghdad, killing 17 gunmen believed to be linked to the infamous blacklisted group the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant ( ISIL), Xinhua quoted a police source as saying.

In a separate incident, the body of a kidnapped member of a government- backed Sahwa paramilitary group, was found in a village outside the city, a police source said. Three of his family members were killed while trying to recover the body.

In Baghdad, three bombs went off near a popular market in the northern Sabie Abkar district, leaving one civilian dead and ten wounded, a police source told Xinhua.

In Anbar province, a fierce clash erupted in the early morning in eastern part of the militant-seized city of Fallujah, some 50 km west of Baghdad, between an army force and gunmen, believed to be linked to ISIL, leaving seven gunmen dead and five wounded, a provincial police source said.

Meanwhile, seven civilians were killed and 17 wounded by artillery and mortar shelling on several neighbourhoods in Fallujah, a medical source of the hospital said.

Elsewhere, six soldiers were wounded when a sticky bomb attached to a minibus carrying them detonated near the town of Daqouq in the city of Kirkuk, a local police source said.

In Diyala province, a leader of a Sahwa group was killed when gunmen attacked his house in a village near the provincial capital city of Baqub, a police source said.

In another incident, police shot dead two suspected gunmen during a security operation in the city of Sa`diyah, some 60 km from Baquba, the source added.